Keelung at the Northeast Coast of Taiwan

Saturday afternoon, Yih-Min Wu, a seismology professor at our department, invited us to his hometown Keelung (基隆), which is situated just some 15 km to the Northeast of Taipei at the northeast coast of Taiwan. (Thanks a lot, Yih-Min, we had a great time in the Keelung area!)


The coast line is beautiful with steep cliffs and large bays. In the background of the following picture you can see Keelung Mountain, an ancient volcano. Gold was found nearby, which was the birth of the village of Rueifeng (rightside of Keelung Mountain).

From a viewpoint not far from Keelung we were watching the sunset. You can see Keelung and its harbour on the following photo, with Yang Ming Shan (see post from March 2008) in the far background.

The light of the sunset permitted to take some great photos. We were borrowing the digital reflex camera (Nikon D40x) - a really nice camera!!! - from our working group.

After sunset, Yih-Min took us to a seafood restaurant on Herping Island. The island is connected by a bridge to the town of Keelung. The restaurant had many seawater aquariums in the front and from those one can choose which fish and seafood one would like to eat. So the fish there is really fresh, freshness guaranteed!


A little fish market was located next to the restaurant selling all kind of fish, clams, snails, squid, sea urchins, and moray eels.

After our delicious seafood meal, we went back to the viewpoint and watched thousands of fisher boats with their bright lanterns out at the sea. They looked a bit like if some stars from the sky had fallen into the water and were now floating in the ocean... A very romantic sight!

Beatitude with Swiss Miss

We've got a phone call this afternoon, it was Y-Rong, asking if she should bring a package of Swiss Miss hot chocolate from Costco, a large supermarket selling in big quantities. Micha's fondness for hot chocolate obviously did not escape Y-Rong's distinct attention. So thanks to Y-Rong we got into the possession of an economy pack of Swiss Miss comprising 75 (!!!) packages of hot chocolate for mere 265 New Taiwan Dollar, which converts to 5 Euro 50 Cents!

Micha is already looking forward savouring her next hot chocolate, which she enjoys in spite of the heat outside...

For our Swiss friends: sorry, Swiss Miss has nothing to do whatsoever with Switzerland, but is an US American product. But even so, it really tastes delicious! (Okay, your Ovo is not bad either!)

Escaping the heat

By now, temperatures in Taipei regularly climb well above 30C already before noon. They also rarely drop below this mark before midnight. Physical activities are best done in the morning hours or after sunset. With all its buildings and streets, the city's capacity to store additional heat makes the temperatures hardly bearable at times. We were therefore very glad when Y-Rong invited us to go camping with her friends out in the woods in the mountains south of Taipei for the last weekend.
The following map shows the location of our campsite as a blue placemark. The valley we went into follows a tributary stream of the Wulai River, which drains through the village of Wūlái (烏來), south of Taipei City.


View Larger Map

When you look at the surroundings of our campsite, you readily see how green and remote the place is. What a relief from the big city! If you follow the small road upstream (to the east) you will see that it continues towards the water divide, from where you can descend down to the town of Ilan.
While Micha went comfortably by car together with Y-Rong and most of her friends, Kamil had the stubborn idea to go there by bike together with Y-Rong's boyfriend Y-Sheng. The two set out at 7:00 AM. The first part was easy, taking the city's metro line down to Xindian at the southern edge of town. Then they cycled upstream towards Wulai. In Wulai, the road goes off to the east into a narrow tributary valley of the Wulai River. The campsite is located some 15 km further upstream. The later it got, the hotter it got. Y-Sheng could cope with the heat much better than Kamil, who looked much more desperate than Y-Sheng on this picture.


Funnily, the two brave cyclists still made it to the campsite a good hour earlier than the rest of the group who drove there by car. In the early afternoon, our group was complete and everybody enjoyed the rest of the day being out in the green.


Y-Rong and Y-Sheng were also happily reunited:



We had a delicious 3-course supper, comprising a Japanese miso-soup, noodles and pudding as well as Micha's chocolate cookies for dessert. Plus three highly valued cans of Sapporo-beer that Kamil brought in his luggage by bike. He seems to still have been hungry, though:

... whereas Micha's reaction to this green stickinsect was startled fascination rather than appetite:


Here we see two proud engineers who found a workaround for a missing outer tent.

Fortunately, their engineering skills were unnecessary. It stayed dry all night and the next day greeted us with sunshine:

Correspondingly, everybody's mood was splendid.


A perfect weekend! You can view the rest of the pictures on our Picasaweb Album.

Flowers on Campus and in the Field

In this posting, we want to share with you some beautiful impressions of Taiwan's flora we have daily when cycling across our campus or doing field work:

As we have no clue whatsoever how these flowers or plants are called, we made up our own names for some of the more peculiar ones. The generous attribution of new names to unknown plants is definitely an inheritance from Micha's father...

We named this kind of lily (?) "Ophiura-Lily" as it reminds us of brittlestars, a relative of starfish.
Here you can see Kamil admiring the size of a cucumber, and next to it the "Deadly-Blue-Solanaceous", a sand plant and some very red "bee-hive flowers"...


Ha, this one we know, it's a passion fruit plant! (We dedicate this photo to Dorli, Micha's mum, who tried as tediously as unavailingly to grow a potted passion fruit plant in their apartment.)

And here are some impressions of the campus: yellow trees seaming the road we live in, "tiger lily", again "Ophiura-Lilies", and a "orange trumpet flower".

玉山 ... 還是 雨山?

Mong-Han took me (Kamil) along on a weekend trip with his friends into the mountains lately. We attempted to climb 玉山 (yù shān). With 3952m above sea level, it is the highest peak of Taiwan and one of the highest mountains in all of East Asia. Its name translates as "jade mountain". Geologically, this is a gross exaggeration, because there are no jade-bearing rocks (that form at high pressures) exposed, but mostly only slates and sandstones.
The mountain lies in the a large national park named likewise.


After leaving Taipei on Friday afternoon, we were headed for Tungpu, a small mountain village south of Choshui Valley in Central Taiwan. The next morning, before setting out for the climb, we were all still in quite good mood. The above picture of Mong-Han with two friends from Fong-Yuan gives evidence to it.
Our good spirits were not meant to last long, however. Only few minutes after we started our ascent up to the PaiYun lodge at an elevation of c. 3400 m, where we were supposed to stay overnight, it started to rain.


The guy with the red jacket said he was the mountain guide. I preferred to rather trust Mong-Han, instead.

It rained really hard...

... and incessantly.

Arriving at the Paiyun lodge, I was hoping to warm myself with some hot tea in a cozy dry place next to an oven:
Wet down to my underpants how I was, I hurried into the lodge, just like these hikers did. Some three weeks after the experience, I cannot properly describe the huge disappointment I felt, when I found out that INSIDE Taiwanese mountain huts are very much unlike huts in the European Alps. There was no "gute, warme Gaststube" and no drying room. In fact, there was no dry room, no dry spot at all in the hut! So all we could do is to hope for better weather to cheer us up, which in fact did not come anymore.
It then only added to my already bad spirit that the national park staff apparently has a tendency for sarcastic humour, as this sign showed:


I am now convinced that Taiwanese cartographers must have mistakenly misunderstood the mountain's real name. 玉山 (yù shān) sounds almost like 雨山 (yǔ shān), which translates more appropriately as "rain mountain".
After a short night with still incessant rain and strong gusts of wind, it was decided not to climb up to the top but to descend instead. Back in the bus a few hours later, it was at least dry again. The worst, though, was still to come: My ears were maltreated with karaoke for some 4 hours on the drive back to Taipei...
However, having seen some gorgeous pictures of 玉山 on flickr.com, I am determined to give it another try later this year, in October or November, when the weather is supposed to be much drier!

Milka Cow's Rival

May we present: Super Cow!!!


Found on a package of Taiwanese pizza cheese. (Kamil really gets desperate finding cheese...)

Gratulations to Jan

Hallo Jan, Danke für dein Kommentar!

恭喜, 恭喜!

Gong xi, gong xi zu Eurer Hochzeit und alles, alles Gute fuer Eure gemeinsame Zukunft!

Micha und Kamil